Last May 8, on the Day of Remembrance dedicated to the victims of terrorism, the Head of State Sergio Mattarella, in an interview with a major national newspaper, spoke – decades after the tragedies of the Seventies – about “shadows, dark spaces, complicities not fully clarified “, which” still exist “. Hence, the President insists, “a fundamental requirement for the Republic” is “the complete truth”, a need for justice where not all responsibilities have been discovered and sanctioned. But above all a need for understanding.
“Because understanding – explain to Adnkronos Mario José Cereghino and Giovanni Fasanella, scholars, historians and journalists – is the premise for never reliving that experience, which not only entailed a very high cost in terms of human lives, but which contributed to downsizing the growth prospects of our country and its role on the international scene “.
Those shadows, those dark spaces, those complicities not yet cleared up, to which Mattarella alluded, are in fact exactly the stuff of which “The Black Book of the Italian Republic”, of which they are authors, is made. The ‘omnibus’ volume proposed by Chiarelettere is out today; it collects together – in chronological sequence – four of their titles, published between 2010 and 2020: “International Intrigue”, “The English coup”, “The Moro puzzle”, “The minds of the double state”. (continues)
Those years of lead, which never pass
The documentary analyzes of the two researchers are supported and corroborated by those of a magistrate, who has been in the front row in the main processes of internal terrorism and its foreign links, Rosario Priore, who has been part of international commissions on subversion and crime organized. What comes out is a great historical, journalistic and judicial fresco of thirty years of Italian events, in which the three components are examined from different points of view, each finding its own space and a fuinal synthesis.
Is there a link between the violence of the Years of Lead in Italy and international contexts? Yes, without a doubt, argue the authors of the book. And it is “a veritable clandestine war, fought by our own British, American and French allies”. This is how Cereghino and Fasanella tell the life of the “double state”, giving a precise picture, supported by very detailed documentation, of why the Italian Republic in its complex and brutal history – from the second post-war period to today – has been marked by terrorism, attempts to coups, deviated secret services and massacres, in an endless series of tragic events.
Their books are the result of years of research on “first-hand sources”: official documents never fully clarified, found in national and Anglo-Saxon archives among the most prestigious in the world, starting with the British one in Kew Gardens. Thus emerges the red thread that binds Priore’s investigations, from Ustica to Moro, from the attack on John Paul II to the massacres of Middle Eastern origin. (continues)
History, processes, information: a difficult knot to untie
The survey highlights “the internal and international contexts, which were the background to the Years of Lead. Here appears the ‘great game’ on the Italian chessboard, in which cold war between enemies and secret war between friends and allies for control of the Mediterranean (and oil) intersected until they overlapped, helping to create, in the second half of the twentieth century, the fertile ground for violence and terrorism “.
Connections that have long been denied, disregarded or diminished, but which are now finally beginning to be recognized also in public discussion. “While the volume was going to press – the authors comment – judicial inquiries were open in various Italian cities on the assassination of Moro and on many other episodes of both political terrorism and ‘paramafia’ terrorism”.
A sign, if confirmation were still needed, “that the truth about the bloody season experienced by our country is considered incomplete by the judiciary itself. The question, however, is always the same: how far one can go with judicial sentences ? “. (by Rossella Guadagnini)